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Opinion: Editorials

Editorial: Snapshots from the nation's press

Posted:
10/08/2017 11:40:40 PM MDT

Picture of the U.S. embassy in Havana, taken on last week. Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez slammed the U.S. expulsion of Cuban diplomats as "unjustified... unfounded and unacceptable," in a deepening row over mysterious attacks on staff at the U.S. embassy in Havana. (YAMIL LAGE / AFP)

Cuban mystery

Not since the Cold War has there been a diplomatic mystery as intriguing as the "sonic weapon" purportedly used against American and Canadian officials in Havana. The Trump administration has yet to identify a culprit or a device that would explain the rash of symptoms among officials first noted months ago and acknowledged in August, but these are real and deeply worrisome: hearing loss, dizziness, headaches and cognitive issues.

Every country keeps tabs on potentially hostile diplomats and spies, and the Cold War spy vs. spy games were rich in gimmickry and trickery. But deploying a tool that causes serious health problems would be a serious violation of accepted international behavior.

Cuba's repressive government must be the prime suspect. It would certainly want to keep watch over a large batch of newly arrived American diplomats and intelligence operatives. If Cuba is found to have used some new surveillance machine, the United States would have the obligation to respond angrily.

But until there is concrete evidence about the source of the attacks, the Trump administration is wrong to expel Cuban diplomats from Washington, as it did on Tuesday. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's explanation that Cuba should be punished for failing to protect American diplomats presumes that Cuba was at least aware of the attacks, which the United States has neither demonstrated nor claimed.

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So far, the Cuban government has strongly denied any awareness of a sonic weapon and has actively assisted American investigators. Other parties, most notably Russia, must also figure as suspects: President Vladimir Putin would probably welcome a setback to U.S.-Cuban relations.

Until something more is known, punishing Havana serves only to further undermine the sensible opening to Cuba begun under Barack Obama. President Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the détente — in June his government ordered restrictions on contacts with Cuba that have slowed the flow of visitors to the island, and last week the State Department warned Americans not to travel there, though there is no evidence that tourists are in danger. The sonic attacks on Americans are too serious to be used for cynical political ends.

—New York Times

Predatory payday loans

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new rules for payday loans and car title loans have drawn the predictable cries of outrage from lenders, particularly small storefront operators who say the restrictions will put them out of business. And it's an understandable complaint — after spending five years researching the market for high-cost credit, the bureau has fired a shot right at the heart of these lenders' business model.

But the outrage here isn't what the regulators are doing. It's the way these lenders have profited from the financial troubles of their customers. As the bureau's research shows, payday lenders rely on consumers who can't afford the loans they take out. With no way to repay their original loans other than to obtain further ones, most of these customers wind up paying more in fees than they originally borrowed.

That's the definition of predatory lending, and the bureau's rules precisely target just this problem. They don't prohibit lenders from offering the sort of financial lifeline they claim to provide — one-time help for cash-strapped, credit-challenged people facing unexpected expenses, such as a large bill for medical care or car repairs. Instead, they stop lenders from racking up fees by making multiple loans in quick succession to people who couldn't really afford them in the first place.

The question now is whether lawmakers will try to reverse the bureau and maintain a financial pipeline that's popular with millions of lower-income Americans precisely because it's the one most readily available to them, either online or from the storefront lenders clustered in urban areas. It's a huge pipeline too — the industry made $6.7 billion in loans to 2.5 million U.S. households in 2015, the bureau estimated.

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